Wireless communications networks have become wildly popular, due mainly to their ease of installation and use. Additionally, the mobility (the ability of network clients to move freely around the network) offered by the wireless communications networks is extremely attractive, especially for persons with portable computers and personal data/digital assistants. Combine these factors with the fact that new wireless technologies are offering good data bandwidths (currently, wireless communications networks offer data bandwidths of greater than 50 megabits-per-second at small distances) and the net result is that the number of installations of wireless communications networks has rapidly increased.
Unfortunately, wireless communications networks are not without limitations. For example, while the data bandwidths of wireless communications networks have continued to increase, they have not approached the data bandwidth of wired networks. The normal wired Ethernet network has a data bandwidth of approximately 100 megabits-per-second, or twice the data bandwidth of the state-of-the-art wireless network. While Gigabit Ethernet wired networks, offering a gigabit-per-second of data bandwidth, are being installed in many sites. Compounded with a higher price for a wireless communications network's devices, many potential clients are waiting for the cost-performance ratio of wireless communications networks to drop.
One way to make an impact on the cost-performance ratio is to increase the data bandwidth. A common way to increase the data bandwidth is to make more efficient use of the available bandwidth through a more efficient data-encoding scheme. Unfortunately, an upgrade to the encoding method usually means that older hardware is incompatible. Additionally, the more encoding applied to the data, the more sensitive the encoded data is to errors.
An additional way to increase the data bandwidth is to simply use more spectrum bandwidth. For example, in the United States, there is more available bandwidth for use at the five gigahertz Industrial-Science-Medical (ISM) band than at the 2.4 gigahertz ISM band. However, there is a limit to the amount of bandwidth that a single communications network can use, due to governmental regulations. Also, higher frequency signals tend to be more easily blocked by walls, trees, etc., decreasing the effective range of the wireless network.
A need has therefore arisen to increase the data bandwidth of a wireless communications network without significantly increasing the wireless network's sensitivity to noise while maintaining the wireless network's adherence to governmental regulations.